Friday, March 29, 2013

All is quiet on the bridge. The background hum of the power units,
felt more than heard… the gentle susurrus of the atmo plant, the rustle and murmur
of the duty shift… It’s midwatch and everything is bathed in soft indirect
red lighting, giving the ‘feel’ of night without losing visual detail...

Rigging for Red in the Conn is an eon’s old naval tradition during
midwatch, no matter that the rest of the boat in under 20% normal lighting in
the gangways and bays... just at the point of loss of color vision. But the
Conn, the Command Deck, is a special place… even tonight, especially tonight.

I sit leaning forward lost in thought… no one disturbs me. They
all know I am chewing over the last few days in my mind… the choices, my
choices… and the lives those choices cost… I sit in the ruddy red light staring
into the main viewscreen and think back…

* * * * * * *

I and my crew had no ‘stake’ in the Battle to come. We are Anoikis
veterans and a mixed crew. There are Caldari, Gallente, Matarii and even a few
Amarr in my crew, all of whom have chosen to turn their backs on the Empires of
New Eden and forge a life for themselves and their families on the other side
of the sky… They all swore an oath to each other on joining my corp and crew…
an oath above all others to trust in each other regardless of Race, Bloodline,
Creed or Religion.

We all knew what going to Luminaire meant to each of us. It was
discussed, and in this special case, voted on in full assembly before we
shipped up. Normally we operate under standard Navy regs… my ships run under a
taut Dictatorship and I am the Despot. But this… this was different. And I was
not going to have a man or woman aboard that was not fully in agreement with
going. We had heard the rumors, scoured the NEOCOMM, waved friends and
sometimes, even enemies seeking information, rumors and rumors of rumors...

We slowly came to understand that it was true… that after all
these years a major military effort was going to be fielded… to destroy the
Caldari Titan “Shiigeru”. Finally a fight to remove the Leviathan and the
Caldari support Fleet that had held orbit for 5 long years over the planet
Caldari Prime in the Luminaire system… Holding captive and threatening wholesale
death to the Gallente citizens cordoned off and held captive in ‘Districts’ on
the planet’s surface directly below.

But, for the first time pitting not only the Caldari and Gallente
Navies against each other but a new type of ground force would be in pitched
battle down below. These were not standard Military forces, but DUSTers. Originally
they were criminal test subjects, then Amarrian volunteers, heavily modified
with radical Sleeper implants, they were called ‘Templars’ by the Amarr. They were
elite, highly trained, physically conditioned to a level never seen before in a
human and mentally conditioned to complete subservience and absolute service to
Amarr… and to Empress Jamyl Sarum herself. They were the secret product of the
Amarr Empire’s desire to rule ALL of New Eden… Immortal and all but invincible Soldiers…
soldiers who cannot die.

But those plans and secrets were exposed during the Battle for the
Matarii Core Freedom Colony on the planet Pike’s Landing in the Amamake system.
Near the end, with the extreme escalation of the battle going against them, the
Imperial Navy itself bombarded the HAZMAT truck farm that they believed held all
the remaining Templar Clones, and their secret Sleeper tech… but they were
wrong. One escaped…

Templar One, Vince Barabin as he was known in his former life...
he escaped all who tried to find him and found peace and safety offered him by the
Ishukone CEO, Mens Rappola… and in the care of Dr. Gable Deitrich one of his
former crewmates from The Retford… safety in return, of course, for the reverse
engineering of the Sleeper technology inside his brain.

An individual Immortality Implant… an implant that replaces the
entire hippocampus, thalamus and brainstem in the human brain and replaces the
spinal cord with technology that not only does all the functions of a normal
spinal cord, but is also a very powerful transmitter. It is this implant that makes
possible the same instantaneous personality gestalt transfers similar to the Empyreans…
only over planetary ranges, not light years.

This technology has now been released to the whole of New Eden.
Now the terrible deadly no quarter given or asked battles that the Empyreans
wage in the cold hard black… will be as ferociously waged in the harsh bright
light of day in the mud and the blood down deep in the gravity wells of the
planets and moons of New Eden.

But… DUSTers are not Templars. While they are as elite, as highly
trained, as highly conditioned and as incredibly deadly… and yes, as Immortal…
they are free agents like their Immortal brethren, the Empyreans. They are Immortal
Mercenaries beholden to no one and swayed by no laws or rules of man other than
the strictures of CONCORD.

This was the battle we face… this was a battle that was named
before it even began… The Battle for Caldari Prime. I had decided I wanted to
take a ship there and if not take sides, at least take part. In our daily
operations in Anoikis the only way to make ISK, to turn coin as we say, is
through Sleeper Loot & Salvage… and looting and salvaging is something we
are very good at… and I had a feeling the airless black above Caldari Prime was
going to be littered with wrecked ships very, very soon.

Now there are them as call us vultures… feeding on the dead they
say. But the very simple truth is, if we don’t Loot & Salvage those wrecks,
someone else will and we didn’t assplode all them ships… Why, the truth be
known, we’re performing a civic duty by cleaning ‘em up and keeping the orbits
free of junk! Do you have any idea how many weather and communication
satellites are brought down each year in New Eden by errant wreckage?? The
figure would astound you I assure you.

So, we discussed, voted and loaded up one of my new favorite Salvage
Destroyers… an Algos. Lovely bird the Algos… sorta reminds you of one of them
old fashioned ‘airships’ from ancient history… or what used to be called a
‘submarine’… though even our Matarii Marines cannot dun the why of that naming…
but they do share a familiarity with the quaint 2D ‘flats’ of ‘submarines’ from
the mythology of old Earth that was.

So, we fitted her up, but not as a ‘dedicated’ salvager with
tractors and Salver IIs in the weapon mounts… no, there was going to be a War
in progress and we could not count on Caldari or Gallente Naval protection… for
that matter maybe not even CONCORD… and if the most extreme rumors were true we
might even encounter Dread fleets from the far deeps of Null where lawless and
strange pirate Alliances hold sway over countless vast and rich… and yet empty…
star systems, where not even CONCORD dares go.

This is a sweet little boat and for a Dessie decent EHP/DPS (w/ my
skills) but her main job on this run was to field those Salvager Drones at max
range and be able to (hopefully) GTFO if needed. But I was not overly
concerned… I had run Salvage Ops at the Titan a few years ago when I was a
newly minted Captain with my very First Cruiser command (a Stabber)… which, TBH,
I lost before I even got her home AND I lost her to the Caldari Titan Support
Fleet… which was WHY I had spent quite a bit if time round the ol Titan…
learning how to deal with those poor bastards, the Caldari Fleet commanders…
you see they had some serious issues with Tibus Heth as I understood it… cause he
had laid down some very weird RoE’s (Rules of Engagement)…

You see if a “ship” attacked them they could, and did, respond in
kind… in other words fire on one and they ALL fired back… yes, learned that one
the hard way I did… BUT, sic some ‘drones’ on ‘em and they could only fire back
on the drones, yes… I said ONLY the drones… weird huh? But if while your drones
are putting the damn damn on em if you opened fire with your guns and then recalled
your drones… guess what? They stopped defending themselves.

Yup, stopped em dead. It seems they were only allowed to fire upon
who, or what, actually initiated the hostilities… as you had ‘joined’ the
drones aggro after they initiated, then when the drones either assploded (you
didn’t always get em all back in time… there were upwards of 40 BC and BS class
vessels out there ya know…) but once they were either a ball of wreckage or smoking
and shooting sparks all over your drone bay... the ship you were still firing
on was not allowed to fire back on you as ‘you’ were not the aggressor… even
though you were still firing on them!

So you could just follow em around and kill ‘em at your leisure…
and then Loot and Salvage for profit. Well, you could vie for the L&S…
there were a LOT of pilots who knew this game and came only for the L&S. I
knew that game well too… spent many an evening later on in a dedicated fast
salvager doing exactly the same thing. So I felt I had a lock on that aspect of
the coming battle… my worry was the battle itself and how the system’s Sec Rating
was gonna be hit by this event… but, better to try and lose then to never try
at all I say.

So we entered Luminaire two nights before the planned attack. I
wanted to make some Safes insystem, some InstaWarps off of several Stations and
Warpto’s all around Titan herself. In general do some scouting and get familiar
with the ‘lay of the grid’ as they say and… well… things didn’t work out quite
as planned.

Our first night in we made and logged the BMs we needed around the
system then did some scouting around in general, then we went to the Titan…
Those of my crew who had not seen the Leviathan or any Titan up close before
were, as all are… awed at first sight of one of the largest class of Warships
in New Eden. I dropped us out of warp at 50km from the “Shiigeru”. She is a
“Leviathan” class Titan of Caldari design and manufacture and she is 18,056m in
length… 18 kilometers long.

As seen from 50km out she sits regal in the light from both the
Luminaire sun and the reflected light from Caldari Prime. I order us to fly in
under full thrusters… Then I, and the old hands, enjoyed the show as our newest
crewmates first see smaller vessels orbiting and flying around the Leviathan…
and then, as I did years ago, the jaw dropping understanding when they realize
those tiny ‘specks’ are Battlecruisers… and Battleships. The sheer SIZE of the
damned thing is very hard to grasp. To ‘say’ eighteen kilometers and ‘see’ 18km
are two very different things…

Once things settle down I give the crew… hell, and myself TBH, a
bit of a treat and do a grand tour of the old war horse with her gleaming deep
blue-black armor… Once from stem to stern over the top then down and under and
back. I finally order everyone back to duty stations and them as not ‘on’ duty
“OFF MY BRIDGE!” I grin to myself as they jump and then file out smiling and
thumping each other’s shoulders…

We make a number of Pounce BMs both out at warp range and in
close. A good number of Empyreans and Faction War vessels from both sides are
now gathering, same as us, either here for sport or those as are engaged in the
war effort, for honor, or for ISK… There are the usual conflicts whenever
Empyreans gather… the criminal and the suspect and the corporate grudges and
wars do not stop just because a major battle is to be waged… if anything that
fact alone heightens the probability of conflict both intentional and not…
there are wrecks on scan… lots of wrecks…

We take up a stationary position under the Titan and near to
center of the fleet of ships… I had noticed that the Standard Caldari Navy
Titan Support Fleet was not here when we arrived… but there are many wrecks and
drifting scorched and blackened freight containers… very many of them. I order
a deep scan and the results are as I guessed… the Standing Fleet had been
decimated by the Empyreans. I have seen this only once before… back during the
Jita Riots. The New Eden clusterwide political turmoil that followed in the
path of drastic changes to clone technology and the market made unilaterally by
one of, if not “the”, the most influential and enigmatic corporations in New
Eden, CCP.

The Jita Riots were named for the political rioting that started
at the Jita Monument… it spread quickly to Amarr, Rens and other systems and even
here, to the Titan… the number of Empyreans present that day was stunning. And
I and my crew joined in just to say we had. When I arrived then, as today, the
Standing Fleet had been destroyed. And as we watched that day a backup fleet
warped in and landed on grid at the Titan… and melted in less time than it
takes to read this recounting. It was quite simply amazing to see… and it seemed
to be repeating on this day… and a few minutes later, it did. The backup
Standing Fleet landed on grid and… very quickly, died to a ship.

I ordered “Man Battle Stations.” “Align to Safe 1.” “All stop and
hold at station keeping.” Once all decks and stations had reported in and we
were holding station I ordered “Launch Salvage Drones.” and began calling
targets… the drones went to work efficiently and without incident… right up to
when we exploded… Huh. I
sat in my POD rocking in the shock wave and rapidly dissipating cloud of
wreckage and smoke from my lost Algos… I was stunned to say the least… it seems
I had been CONCORDED... wait… what!?!? CONCORDED!?!?!?!
WTF? We were only SALVAGING for the god’s sake!!!

I had SARA (Semi Autonomous Rational Array computer AI) check on
the crew, losses were light thank the gods, but still… the loss of even one
life in the pursuit of what I “knew” was legitimate deep space salvaging was
for me simply unforgivable. I waved CONCORD and immediately lodged a formal
complaint and asked for an investigation and explanation of this heinous
act… I was told, “Due to recent changes
in CONCORD Law and Empyrean Rules of Engagement (the infamous Crimewatch
System) any drones used in assistance against a pilot with a Criminal Flag now garners
a Criminal Flag and “Drone Assistance” against pilots with either Suspect Flag
or who is an Outlaw now garners a Suspect Flag also. SARA received and displayed
the following chart from CONCORD…

So… huh… Salvage drones can kick off Illegal acts now and not a
god’s damned thing I can do about it… great. OK, my crew, officers and men had
all rendezvoused back at Dodi Station and I bought and fit out another Algos
same as the old =Das Boot= and we went back to Luminaire, stationed up and
logged for the night.

The next night we went back to work at the Titan… On our way I
stared at that damned CONCORD “Crimewatch” Safety Switch that had been
installed, against my will, under the CONCORD “Retribution Act”. After they had
finished installation and we had undocked I set the thing to “RED” (off), had
my engineers make a very nice tritanium cover that blended in nicely with the
control panel it was installed in and to finish it off, I had a small
flatscreen installed on top with a endlessly cycling animation of a
multicolored Unicorn prancing merrily around on it… like we needed a stoopid
‘safety’ switch…

However, always a man to look to the future and not make light of
technological advancements no matter how stoopid or asinine… I had them remove
the cover and I set the (stoopid) switch to “GREEN” (safe). As I understood it
now if I tried to ‘do’ anything that would warrant a Suspect or worse, a
Criminal Flag (IE a CONCORD set transponder code that transmits
omni-directionally on ALL bands that we just did a boo-boo so everyone can take
pot shots at us…) that “GREEN” setting would keep us from ‘accidentally’
getting CONCORDED or attacked by Empire Police, Navies and/or other Empyreans…
uh, huh.

This time we landed on grid at max drone range, 55km from the
nearest ships and wrecks… I angled for a fly by that would keep us aligned to a
warpable and ordered speed set to 78%... as slow as we can go and still guarantee
an immediate warp initiation, then I launched the Salvage drones and targeted
ONE wreck… and set em on it while I hovered over my Nav Officer ready to pounce
and hammer the ‘Warp’ button the second I saw anything hinkey… The drones
droned away on the wreck, and delivered some nice salvage back to the hold…
whew.

OK, Salvage Ops SOP was now to orbit at extreme range, salvage one
wreck at a time and take it easy… Things settled into a routine. We orbited the
site staying between 50 and 55km from the currently targeted wreck and trying
as hard as we could to keep up with or beat the other ships to the salvage
until we exploded…

Huh? I sat in my POD rocking in the shock wave and rapidly
dissipating cloud of wreckage and smoke from my lost Algos… I was stunned to
say the least… it seems I had been CONCORDED... again… wait… what!?!? OH GODSDAMMIT!!!! CONCORDED AGAIN!?!?!?!

Needless to say I was… displeased. At this point though, having
lost 2 ships, fits (but no more crew as we were ready this time dammit!) and
what was shaping up to be a worthwhile load of salvage… Crap. So we all just
rendezvoused at the nearest station and drank the night away… whatta waste…

This afternoon, after we had all taken our “Hair of the Dawg”
pills and cleaned up a bit, I purchase a Hound and fit only a CovOps Cloak and
a 1MN MWD… and we headed out to see what we shall see… and well, it was all
over… and had been for hours. The “Shiigeru” had been destroyed and the wreckage
was down spread over the surface of Caldari Prime… the battle is over and all
that was still going one was a smattering of Empyreans going at each other tooth
and nail and the Gallente Navy and CONCORD back in full force… whatta waste,
what a terrible terrible waste…

* * * * * * *

I slowly stand in the bloody light of the Conn… and order normal
lighting resumed and then,“Open shipwide comms”….

“This is the Captain…”

“My friends, we came to take part and witness, and possibly profit
from, this great battle.”

“We missed the fight, lost two ships, made not one red ISK and
lost a few good men into the bargain.”

“We are, it seems, too far removed from the rules and ways of life
in Known Space.”

“These Empires have become strange to me… the rules here make no
sense anymore.”

“We are now truly a people of Anoikis, that is the place where we
know and understand the rules and the ways in which we must live, and die… that
is our home and the place we belong, not here.”

“Let us go home now… and mourn our dead and hold our loved ones
once again and take leave of… this…”

I wave an arm at the screen showing Caldari Prime and the burning
craters visible from space to the naked eye. The craters that broke through to
magma… when the “Shiigeru” fell from the sky…

”Let us leave these wars of genocide and mass destruction to them
as find it suitable… I no longer do.”

I take my seat, wave comms closed and order Rig for Red resumed. I
stare at the lurid monstrous scene before me…

“Take us away from here…”I say it quietly, almost to myself… The bridgecrew quietly turns to
their duties and sets course. We bank away from Caldari Prime… her burning
lands and the unaccountable millions of her dead… and dying. We align and build
speed… then, for the first time in my life, that brief, gut wrenching ‘twist’
one feels as the ship shudders through the warpbarrier… is not so much something
to be endured as it is… a relief.

The camdrones are locked on Caldari Prime and I
watch as it swiftly disappears in our warpwake… I sit up, take a deep breath, let
it out… then I tap the controls to set the cam view forward… without a second
thought.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Been a while tween posts and TBH looks like I will prolly continue
posting at a slower rate than in the past what with RL general stuff, work
& life, picking up a bit as we wend our way into spring.

We in HBHI have been playing the learning game in New Eden, well…
in Anoikis actually, what most call Wormhole Space or W-Space, WHs or just
holes. We have spent over 2 years now learning the ins and outs of life in
Anoikis. The give and take of living in a POS, the routines of life in holes…
daily scanning, Anoms, Sigs, hole control, PI, sites, getting comfortable with
the complete lack of any outside influence as regards safety (IE CONCORD),
finding that we are happier in holes for that very reason… freedom. And to top
it off, the absolute and very real sense of ownership of a system in Anoikis…
and the risk that rides with it.

And finally, as was bound to happen, we were camped by a superior
force. In our case it was ‘Surely You’re Joking’ [HAHA] Alliance and thank the
Gods it was not a large scale camp or a Merc Op and we got out of it with our
skins, pods, ships and mods intact even if doing so depleted our wallets quite
severely but we ended up joining with SYJ Alliance which has been all to the
good. Now I say Thank the Gods it was not a large camp or an SYJ Merc Op because
I recently went on my first SYJ Anoikis POS Bash and Raid. Yup, about 20+ SYJ
guys (3 of us from HBHI) and another 20 or so effectives from Alliances and
corps we set Blue for the Op took over the Static to a occupied C2 (hole
control), staged an Omaha POS then caged (IE to totally cover a POS with T2 Lrg
Warp Bubbles) and attacked and reinforced a Large Minmatar POS and a Large
Domination POS… then we camped, waited out the reinforced timers… then
destroyed them…

…then carefully looted them of any and everything of value. I am
become, that which I used to fear… or at least that what caused me more than a
few late worry filled nights… a guy in a DPS ship in fleet from a corp and
Alliance that bashes and/or evicts small corps in holes for fun and profit.

We have always in the past been a small corp inna hole. At first we
lived in a C1 in an Alliance owned Lrg Amarr POS, then sharing a C2 with an
Allied corp, then moving up to a C3 but this time alone in a Lrg. Minmatar POS.
I was the POS Manager so it was up to me to learn as much as I could about the
ins and outs of POSes, which I did and some of which knowledge has spilled
across the pages on this blog occasionally.

I learned the differences between the various races POSes and the
% here and % there of the various Factions POSes. I decided, and argued my co-Directors
into agreeing, that overall the Large Minmatar was the best for outright
defense of the T1 POSes and the Large Domination was the best of the faction
towers in Defense. ISK drove the final decision as it always does and we went
with a Lrg Minmatar. And it has served us well, and still does today. We once
more call “Serenity Station” home in the Alliance homehole… though she has been,
for reasons unknown to me, renamed “Pandora” (I know not if it is for the movie
or that little troublesome box... but as I am no longer POS Manager it is not
my concern so meh).

Anyhoo, after we decided on a Lrg Minnie Spike I got even deeper
into defense modules and defense strategies and internal modules and Industry
and that led to POWER & CPU and Grid Balancing… in other words I got to
know and understand POSes very deeply. And this was back pre Crucibble when POS
fueling was very different from today…

I’m gonna intentionally digress for a sec here… (steps up onto an
old beat up soapbox…)

There were no ‘fuel blocks’ back then, you had to constantly buy,
or create via PI, the large variety of products you now use to BUILD Fuel
Blocks… but you had to add them into the POS Fuel Bay like adding the parts of
a recipe into a blender or a hopper, or, more like having to constantly ship in,
or make, all the various goods and services that would be needed to support and
run a Real Space Station.

Nowadays you still make or buy the prods from PI somebody does
have to make the damn Fuel Blocks for sale… or we can haul out the PI, sell it
and buy and haul in the damn Fuel Blocks… or make all the PI prods (except ICE
as usual) and then devote a huge amount of our Industrial capacity to making
our own fuel, thereby cutting heavily into our normal ammo/droan/ship making efforts
etc. So in a way it is more complex, yet not in a good direction… not in a
direction that emulates Real Life.

You see I actually liked the old fuelling mechanic as it was far
more immersive and realistic in that a Planetary Orbital Space Station would
NEED all these various ‘things’ shipped in almost daily… AND things we didn’t
(and still don’t today) ship in like food and water for crew and staff… and
ship OUT (or shoot into the sun… I mean why not? It’s a big ol nuclear furnace
just burning away out there…) like garbage and industrial and human (and
alien?) waste products etc. etc. … I liked how the fuels worked and I saw CCPs
vision… these were a reasonable number of ‘things’ that reasonably went into
keeping a Space Station up and running… not the, IMHO, stoopid Big Blue Jello
Shooters we ‘feed’ the POS now.

But sadly the game is in now a state of constant slow nerfing to
the point where a monkey with only one hand and blind in one eye will have a
shot at being a PvP king… It’s just the way of the world today… ‘everyone’ is told
they are a ‘Special Snowflake’ and in order to fulfill that idiotic ideal,
everything is getting slowly nerfed and dumbed down until even the
knuckle-dragging mouth breathers are happy and have all their entitlements fulfilled…
sheesh. (ok, I’m done… steps down off the soapbox)…

So, I essence I had learned a helluva lot about POSes and all. So
I planned out a very detailed, uh, plan… for our POS. I wanted a POS players
would think twice about attacking. There are 2 main schools of thought on POS
defenses in EvE. In Hi and Losec (under a War Dec in Hi) your POSes are at risk…
but in Anoikis and Null, they are nothing more than juicy grapes hanging in the
ether… and if they have goodies inside… well, they had better be defended and
not just by the Defense mods in auto-mode.

So I created a diagram for the Def Mods layout, How many and what
kinds of mods, their locations and overlap, ammo types and loadouts and most
importantly of all, Grid Balance. How many of what kind could be OL during
Peace Time and how many and which ones to OL in Time of War. I wanted the best
possibly ‘passive’ ‘Auto-Mode’ defense our POS could have while balancing the
needs of Industry, mod and ship storage… in the event of an attack… by people
like us. Sheesh.

This was the core of my worry and angst… and what I have become. I
knew our POS was at risk, I knew ANY POS can be taken down, remember the edict…
“Don’t anchor what you can’t afford to lose.” All I wanted was a POS so heavily
defended that (1) it would scare off, or at the very least give pause, to them
as would think to attack us and (2) it would survive long enough for us to
login and manually fight back. My biggest worry was not Mods or ammo or even
Grid… it was the same thing we used against the guys in that C2 to the greatest
effect… time.

The guys in the C2 were Japanese. To say the least their prime OL
is not the same as ours. This is the worst case for Anoikis dwellers, when your
enemy is up and active either when you are asleep, or worst, in the middle of
your workday. There are players who will sacrifice their sleep, but few who
will call in sick and none who can ‘afford’ the lost time, just in the name of
the game. Hurrying home to login and finding your POS(es) gone, your faction
defense mods gone… to find everything you worked so long for, that your spent
so many hours creating all gone and listed on someone’s killmail… it would have
been, it must have been… simply crushing.

Two Lrg POSes in a C2 with a stat Hisec entry… one T1 Lrg lightly
defended and the other, a faction Lrg POS quite heavily defended and with
multiple Faction Defense Modules. The problem was… they were filled with
yummies, Industry mods everywhere. Wayyy more than I had ever felt was
reasonable in our POS. And so, they were accessible with a Hisec Static, owned
by small corp with a PvP record none would envy… and with a very high
probability of lucrative loots, what Anoikis Merc worth his weight in gooey nano-ribbons
could say no? The leadership setup scouting, warpins, safes, and watched and
learned their schedules, ships, and routine… plans within plans were laid.

The wind up of all of this was that on a recent Sunday afternoon I
found myself in my Navy Issue ‘Phoon, in fleet, sittin on the edge of one of
the Lrg T2 cage bubbles and firing on that Lrg Domination Control Tower… until
it exploded. I was in on the reinforcing of the first T1 POS but missed the
take down that morning however I made the second timer on the Domination POS. I
was involved, active and shooting shit or awaiting orders all three days of the
Op and glad to have the chance to do so. I learned a lot and got to experience
some really fun moments and, of course, the obligatory totally boring hours of
waiting out the timers… sheesh.

The lessons I learned?

(1) EWAR -I now know why the Dick Star got its name… EWar can be a
blue balled bich. Even with no one awake and actively running defense mods the
POS in auto mode was crippling our attack and we even lost one ship due to a
scram and jam. Logi was unable to assist and so he popped. Now keep in mind
this is only one loss out of a fleet of near 40 ships… for the whole 3 day op.

(2) LOGI – I learned that Logi is THE reason any POS can be taken
down. Good Logi support for a fleet against a POS in auto-mode can totally
counter the available DPS. To counter that you would need manual control and
sustained focus fire from the Def Mods and even then you would have to have the
targeted ship nailed to the floor with webs and long & short points.

In a way it was a comfort to learn I was right in my base
assumptions about the way I had setup our POS defenses. I went for a
half-n-half Dick/Deth Star. The point being that once we had enough guys OL and
manually running the def mods I was going to have EWar concentrate on jamming out
the attacker’s Logi and Web/Points/Guns focus firing on the biggest DPS boats
on grid one at a time. Had the guys who owned these POSes done that, it would
have made a major difference.

But… would it have ‘won’ the battle? I don’t know… the truth is
there is no way to know. If they had upped their defense would my FC have bat-phoned
for more help? I believe so… then would the defenders have upped their defense
by bat-phoning for help of their own?

All I can say is they didn’t bat-phone while we were there for
three days… not once did they log on in any numbers and ‘actively’ defend their
towers… All they did actually ‘do’ was to OL all the Shield Hardeners and a few
extra jammers and damps. They had a total of 13 Shield Hardeners anchored and
the normal setup for a Lrg. Domination POS would be x2 EM/x3 Thrm/x4 Exp/x4 Kin
to bring the total resists to 71/68/68/68. As Shield Hardeners have stacking
penalties any more than this would be a waste of Grid.

So did the Hardeners help? Hell yes, cut all our DPS by 1/4 to 1/3
or more. That’s what they are for after all. But they didn’t ever really put up
a defense that I saw… I never once saw focused fire from more than 2 or 3 mods
and the one time I saw 3 on me at once, it was all different jammers. With Logi
able to easily rep back the Gun DPS (with the POS in auto-mode) the only really
effective def mods were ECM.

I was actually a little surprised at how effective EWar actually was
initially… but once the defenders began OLing extra jams and dampners the FC simply
ordered enough ECCM brought in that we could all warp to the Orca and refit to
x3 ECCM in the mids and back we all went with a greatly reduced susceptibility
to jams… and so I now know that EWar effectiveness can be greatly reduced… in
auto-mode. I cannot but help wonder if it would be as effective under manual
control and focused targeting by multiple jams…

So, DPS can be negated by effective Logi and EWar can be greatly
reduced by ECCM… at least against a POS running in auto-mode… I still want to
know how it would go against a POS that was effectively manually defended with
a real Death Star’s worth of Defense Mods OL and fully loaded… I almost hope I
never personally find out, cause it will mean our POS in homehole will be under
attack and considering the defenses SYJ can bring to bear, if an enemy is just
sittin on our POS bashing it would mean we would have already had a pretty
rough time of it indeed…

I don’t ever wanna be those Japanese players with rich POSes inn a
hole… I’d rather be in League with Death.
=]

Friday, March 22, 2013

After James315’s Post on Wed the 20th, I have no choice but to come to
the conclusion that as deluded, egotistical and outrageous as he was, James315 was also fairly bright. Anyone who can read the writing in the sky is a leg up
on many of the rest in my book, and J315 not only saw it and read it… he heeded
it.

J315’s post “An Important Announcement Regarding the CSM” (which would be
much more honestly titled” An Important Announcement Regarding James315”… is
J315s official withdrawal from the race for CSM8... which, BTW, he never 'officially' entered.

If so then why is he calling it an announcement about the CSM? Because
obfuscation, rhetoric and propaganda is and has been the only way he has communicated
in the past and I have spent tedious and often somewhat revolting hours reading his
crap. As Sun Tzu said, ‘know thy enemy’.

But, the important and most telling part is, “WHY” is James315 stepping
down? Let us explore this latest diatribe and see if we can find the nugget of
truth shall we?

J315 starts with a discussion of the CSM8 election process and the
changes to that process CCP has made for this year’s election. He talks about
the possible effects his election would have on his playstyle and is bloggin. He talks about the CCP required NDA… a lot. And then more
about the NDA, and then even more… and how very wrong it all is.

He talks of how he
has initiated and brought the debate “…on
an issue of critical importance to EVE.” to the for front EvE politics and considering
his ‘platform’ he plainly states that he means the age old argument about Hisec
Safety and Risk/Reward Balancing… (you know, the same way Dan Quail Created the
Internet) and how “I have a unique
platform, but when I take my seat on the CSM, I will be required to put it
aside.”

He talks of his belief that if he could
but talk face-to-face he could convince CCP to change direction… and that
possibility was worth giving up his platform. He talks about his critics and
their ‘take ‘ on him and his politics and platform.

Tellingly he says, “…that I would spend my time on the CSM
screaming in vain for nerfs to highsec. They say I'm ignorant of the
possibility that CCP might simply dismiss me and move on to something else”.
He then pats his own back for a little while on how smart he really is and how
he gets all of that… etc. etc.

Next he talks about the changes to the CSM,
voting system, STV, et al. but ends with “I
don't have very strong opinions on the new voting system, other than my view
that it wasn't very well thought out.”

Then he gets to the heart of it… the
changes to how the "Iceland reps" are chosen. Before, the seven were
chosen by the popular vote. The top seven vote-getters went to Iceland. Now the
two highest vote-getters will have seats at the table but the remaining five
will be selected by CCP alone.

Now… this is the change that makes a
difference but we must all remember that this is NOT a government, this is NOT
a ‘real’ political body. What this is however, is a group a people who play a
very immersive GAME together and their job is to basically ‘lobby’ (as Mabrick put
it so well) the game creators and owners, CCP, ‘for’ changes and
developments the players want and ‘against’ the ones they don’t.

Some of what
he says makes some sense in the world of RL politics… but the fact that we all
call it a “Council of Stellar Management” is more role play than RL fact… and
is actually somewhat misleading as to its real function. The CSM is not a governmental
council, assembly or group of people who ‘manage’ anything… stellar or
otherwise.

They are however a group of people who
(hopefully) communicate and lobby (IE work to sway the opinions of) the Management
and Devs of CCP so that the changes they do make to their for profit product MMO(RP)G
“EVE Online”, are in such direction as will benefit or at least placate the
majority of the current playerbase, or at least the most vocal and
meta-interactive segment of said playerbase… (IE them as care enough to
vote/post/forum rage & whine etc. etc. etc.)… but in truth that’s about it… a working realistic title would be something like the “EVE Players Lobby Group”.

This change does put CCP in the
driver’s seat as regards who gets to ‘lobby’ them. Is this good or bad… Well,
depends on which side of the table yer sittin on as is always the case. But let
us remind ourselves once more of the one prime overriding factor, that the MMO(RP)G
“EVE Online” is NOT the real world, it is a game and a for profit product
wholly owned by CCP. And while they do want & need our subs, the relationship
is quite different from a government and its sovereign peoples… we may take sov
and hold sov and lose sov, but we aint sov… if you get mah drift.

Then James315 makes note of a very
important point, “…high-quality
representatives with fewer votes could be elevated over low-performing (but higher vote getting) reps.” (Parenthesis Mine)
Which he believes undercuts the purpose of the CSM.

I disagree,as a lobby
group no one ‘deserves’ a place at the table, CCP is a business and who gets to
sit down and talk to them is UP to them. Once again, CCP/EVE is not a
‘government and a country’… it’s a ‘business and a product’. To think or act
otherwise is foolish.

Now we get to the real heart of it… James315 discusses the value of the CSM and
the "Iceland seat" and he says,

“Before,
I would have been guaranteed a seat at the table in Iceland, receiving one of
the top seven vote tallies (regardless of whether STV was used).”

This I did not know… how can he KNOW he
was guaranteed a seat? I did worry he was in strong contention, but guaranteed?
That’s either a very bold lie or really worrisome if somehow true… but OK,
let’s go along with that for now, next he says,

“Now
a new scenario presents itself, one in which CCP declines to include me--based
on my platform, reputation, attitude or whatever--but in which I would still be
under the NDA for a year or more.”

And…

“…the
CSM is increasingly viewed by CCP as obsolete…” or “…they view it as a
pool from which they pick and choose the useful candidates and marginalize the
rest.”

To him, in that case he, “…must adjust my cost-benefit analysis of
giving up my platform in order to take a seat on the CSM.” Hmmm… one
wonders why? I mean if he has a decent and worthwhile platform and his
reasoning is sound and is, as he has said over and over and over again, is the
correct direction for EVE Online to go in order to ‘save the game’ from the
misguided and lack luster development and poor management that has led us to
the sorry state of affairs he says we’re in today.

If what he says is true, if his Political Platform is the "Right Answer For Our Times"… then surely he
is a shoe in for one of the coveted "Iceland seats"? Then why the
adjustment? Is he saying he feels CCP will NOT give him a seat because of his
platform? his reputation, his attitude... or whatever? Hmmm… He is probably counting on more of that lack luster management I
guess huh?

And yes, I agree wholeheartedly that CCP would do anything other than pick James315 for
an "Iceland seat"… CCP knows what the majority of the
rest of us know, quite simply that…

Carebears cannot be ‘forced’ by any
means into Losec and Nullsec, but they can be very easily ‘forced’ OUT of EVE
altogether.

And, as far as 'Hisec Risk & Reward' and 'Carebear Creep'... The evidence I see proves to methat CCP is working very hard to ride the
razors edge of balance for both the Carebear and the Griefer in hisec. To give
both as much as they can of their separate desired playstyles while not
favoring one or the other too much... and especially without changing the high risk nature of this
amazing game.

No, there simply is no ‘carrot’ nor is there any ‘stick’ that will ever ‘draw’
or ‘force’ Carebears into areas of EvE they have no interest in playing in.
It’s a GAME and they want to play it in a way that James315 and all of his drooling,
mouth breathing, knuckle dragging sycophants will never understand or accept.

So now James315 asks the main question...

“Does
a (non-Iceland?) seat on the CSM offer enough influence to justify going under
the NDA, as opposed to having someone else on the CSM who shares my views but
doesn't have a comparable platform to give up?”

His response…

“I
am withdrawing from the CSM8 race.”

One can clearly determine, from the
question and withdrawal, that his ANSWER was... No.

And for James315 to
come to this conclusion means he knows CCP will not give him a "Iceland
seat" and this to me is the "Nugget of Truth". Because he knows his views and platform are simply far too extreme, will fix
nothing and would be, in fact, greatly damaging to EVE Online.

James315 understood this
well and clearly enough to back out instead of going ahead and giving everyone
a reason to forget The Mitanni as the most controversial character to come out of EvE… oh no, “IF”
he had won a slot and an "Iceland seat", that place would be
James315s after the very first Summit w/ CCP.

Because James315 would have to choose
to eitherback down, step out of character and
become reasonable in order to actually try and work with CCP and the rest of the CSM… in which case he would be shown as a complete fool and a troll and
garner the ridicule of all his followers or... he would have to back up his rhetoric and make a absolute and complete fool out of himself by pounding the pulpit and spewing his nonsense in front of
real live people…in which case... well, what is fun in the anonymous arena of the Internet is simply not workable, or even acceptable, in the Real World... just ask Mittens.

To actually win and go to Reykjavik would
be nothing but a lose-lose for James315 and he knows it. And so James315 has backed down
and now he can continue to stand high on his soapbox and make up all the rationalizations he wants and say anything he
pleases without any RL consequences…

Except, I’m betting he loses quite a lot
of the support he has had up until now. Oh some will stay on for the lulz and
cause he’s somebody in Nulls alt or something… but his heyday is over…

Throwing
in the towel before the first punch is thrown… man that’s just poor form,
really poor form.

Plus…
I cannot help but wonder if CCP took a good hard look at James315 and made
those rule changes JUST so they did not have to actually sit in the same room
with the likes of him… If so, then James315 himself was his own greatest enemy.
Kinda give me a warm fuzzy inside… like the world is still… you know... working as
intended. =]

Them as what follow me...

Graphiti...

Round and round we go...

Fav Post Bytes...

"Maybe we're not that different after all and I have my own reality to get to grips with."Absence of Substance

Now THAT is wisdom...

We are, each and alone, the absolute center of our subjective 'verse... this is the way of life.To see another's POV as if it were your own... this is the way of truth...To allow that some others have POVs you cannot and will never understand, and yet accept them as they are, this is the way of acceptance...To kill them all without rancor or anger, but in brotherhood... this is the way of EVE.

This Is What We DO!!!

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Negato:

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